


Until the end

by Eluvian



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Blood, Comfort, I don't really accept it would happen, I had a bad day, I have a bad habit of imagining cute people dying in another lovely person's arms..., Snow, it's just a big "what if"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:28:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6212635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eluvian/pseuds/Eluvian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ciel's revenge is complete. But he had suffered a lot of damages too. He's satisfied, but he's dying and there is one person who is with him in the last hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the end

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0sThY2sDKE

It was done. Their life was over. Ciel's revenge was fulfilled.

  
He didn't realise it at first, only when Ciel's right eye started to shine with a sheer, white, divine light, sharp as a blade and cold like the Void itself. Then Ciel collapsed onto the ground.

  
Sebastian rushed to him, too late, he was aware, but still, feeling the necessity to comply his obligation.

  
He looked at his right hand. The mark on it, the purple pentagram glimmered with the same intensity the boy's eyes had. Sebastian had to turn his face away from it, although he fought until the very last moment. He felt a sudden, fast, passing pain, as if the upper layer of his skin were taken off in a shard of an instant, and when he looked back, the sign was gone, with only pure, normal, pale white skin on its place.

  
The bond was broken.

  
he felt something he thought he had forgotten long ago. The refreshing wind of freedom. The urge to run away, rush with the wind, explore the world again like a wild animal, denying nature's and society's laws and try to get rid of the resentful memories of having been the slave of this little brat for years...

  
This is what he expected to feel.

  
But what he felt was a strange void in his soul like the pain you seem to feel in your limbs when they are cut off. A Phantomhive with phantom pain. It seemed he could never escape irony. He felt like a beast having been kept in cage for a long time and then suddenly set free, confused by the thought of having lost its boundaries, shocked by the lack of its chains and without the ability to flee as it was supposed to. Because freedom meant no limits, yes, but it also meant no hand to feed you.

  
Damn. Has he become a shameful dog, really?

  
He turned to the young boy under his feet. Some unknown power made him kneel down to him and take the boy's head into his hands, protective, as he always has been. 'Botchan?'  
Two eyes opened, seeming sleepy and exhauseted, one of them the colour of the clear sky, the other once a seal, now only a gray blizzard of chaos. Both eyes looked at him questioningly and maybe even accusingly.

  
'Stop calling me that. It's irrelevant.' Sebastian couldn't argue with that. But what could he call him? Ciel? He never said it. Only his whole name. Ciel Phantomhive. It just didn't sound right at that time. He'd gotten used to "young master" as one gets used to the location of the washbowl next to his bed. Like something stagnant, never-changing thing. He almost surely would've called Ciel on this name even when he became 40 or 60 or 90 years old... which would obviously never happen. 'Why are you here?', Ciel demanded, breaking his daydreaming and pulling him back to reality. 'You are free now. You may leave,' declared that spoilt, know-it-all, "I-saw-the-sarkest-side-of-life"-voice which sounded so wrong coming from the mouth of a child.

  
The sentence echoed in his head. "Why are you here?" He wouldn't know the answer, because it was so obvious that it could almost hide behind its clarity. Or... was it so obvious? There were several alternatives. _'To protect you.'_ It's a bit late for that now. _'Because you are my master.'_ Not anymore. _'Because you need me.'_ What the hell for...? What good can he still do?... Wherever he looked, he met boundaries.

  
Around Ciel there was an actual puddle forming out of his blood, flowing from the plenty wounds he has suffered. They were draining out his life unstoppably. He probably only had minutes left. How many, it couldn't be told. Sebastian admired the small body, wondering about his mistake, letting it flow over and over around his mind, washing it through for the thousandth time, filling him with a torturing sweetness of guilt.

  
'It always astonished me how fragile the human body is', he murmurs into the cool wind, perplexed by the fact that he actually said it out loud. There are, mind, not many emotions in his voice, it is rather the voice of a doctor or a surgeon or a...

 _Undertaker._ The word comes into his mind uncontrollably, leaving him shuddering with the associations it creates. His expressions become grim and cold and unreadable, almost as usual... only with a hidden amount of grief.

'You haven't answered my question.' Ciel's voice was like a little prince's; sudden, harsh, and almost agressively demanding. He spoke as he always used to, completely neglecting the undeniable fact that he was dying. Only he could be so obviously oblivious to a thing like that. He'd always had his priorities...

Of course, that was what he's always been. His little prince... And the irony of the fact that he wasn't able to order him anything anymore made the sentence bitter like a cup of tea in which too much lemonade has been put.

He looked so worn out. Not physically, but his soul, it bore the exhaustion of a lot-seen elderly man. It seemed as if he'd seen as much of the dark as some immortals. Sebastian was lots of hundreds of years old and even he didn't have a look like that... probably thanks to that he hid it very well. Ciel wasn't so efficient yet. He was only 13, after all...

Sebastian watched his young, pale face spotted with small drops of blood, exactly the colour of the demon's eyes, his smoke-silver hair scattered on the white plain on his temple, on which deeper lines appeared than on the face of some man the age of 100. It showed the strife the young master was going through, trying to stay awake, to remain in this world just a little longer...

'Why aren't you saying anything?', he inquired in a weak voice, like the caressing touch of the smooth wind.

'I failed you', Sebastian managed to say, breaking out of his prison of silence he'd been trapped in. He felt as if some barrier broke inside him letting out a huge flow of guilt. It flooded him whole inside, horribly burning, devouring him, but at least it was free. Free, honest, cruel torment. But he knew he deserved it. Hi fixed his gaze on the ground on which the red pond was spreading, the essence of life in a colour that brought several memories. Madam Red. The living embodiment of passion. And... unbelievably long red locks, a devilish, crazy laugh and a horrible grin full of spiky teeth. Well, that was another thing. He couldn't think about those people now because of his own shame. He felt it unrighteous to bear anything else than Ciel in his mind. He bowed his head letting his ebony locks fall in front of his eyes, covering some of his face like a dark curtain.   
  
'It doesn't matter.' Ciel sounded strangely calm. 'My revenge is complete. I got what I needed.' Was it really enough? Satisfying? Deaths, at the cost of his life? Of course it was stupid to ask. The revenge wasn’t an alternative, it was an axiom. The cause of their contract. The reason they became linked... 

And Sebastian realised, that despite all the hardship, he’d liked that; living in the fancy palace of this spoilt kid, clearing the world of its sinful, filthy secrets, discovering parts of the world and life and soul that were hidden to people living normal lives and could only be revealed by a strange couple like them.  
He’d been giving all his strengh to help this young master reach his goal. Surely, he’d wanted it to happen too, since it meant his freedom. At the beginning. Than as he’d begun to get used to everything, the desire to achieve his purpose and get rid of the burdens started to fade away and he began to enjoy the middle. He lived day by day, devouring the taste of all the things he could lay his eyes/hands/anything else on, occasionally (all the time) saving Ciel’s life and pulling him out of awkward and uncomfortable situations – like getting kidnapped every day... oh no, only every second day. But he liked it.

And now, when the final piece was found... he couldn’t complete his task.

  
He knew that Ciel wouldn’t survive. There was no miracle that could save him and that left Sebastian feeling useless and bitter and helpless. Centuries flew away in front of his eyes like the flashbacks of the cinematic records and laughed at him cynically, Him, who admired the achievements of a thirteen-year-old child.

He felt it unfair that Ciel could be destroyed so easily while Sebastian’s body has suffered around a billion cuts and got as many bullets and it didn’t mean anything to him, because he would recover in a few minutes. Maybe that was a reason why couldn’t value injuries adequately.

’Are you satisfied, botchan?’, he asked the universe’s stupidest question ever. And he got the most unexpected answer.  
’Yes.’ And a little later ’Although... not completely. I’m so cold, Sebastian...’

His name at the end implied that the sentence was meant to be a wish, or an order, but now it could only be a wish. Not that it mattered. Sebastian – although it wasn’t his real name (not even his name was his own; although, the boy gave it to him and it suddenly meant so much more than it used to) – pulled Ciel into his arms without saying a word, and Ciel cuddled into his warmth instinctively. He was fading away, barely aware of that was happening. He now seemed more lik a child than anytime before. Not even when he’d been sleeping.

’Your clothes will get messed up. They are going to be full of blood’, he noted in a feeble voice, his innocently closed eyes opening with a hint of care and worry.

The demon felt as if a knife had been pierced through his heart and twirled. A large, silver death knife of a Reaper. No, there wasn’t even a weapon like that in existence. No weapon can compete with the pain of the soul. Oh, so he really had one.

He’d never cried. Never ever through history, through dozens and dozens of human lives and and eras and beliefs and empires passing. He was a damned demon, demons never cry, do they?  
Do they?  
’Sebastian... will you stay with me?’, Ciel muttered, without an „until I fall asleep” as he always did. They both knew – or at least felt – that there would be no more falling asleep. Or, at least, no more waking up.

Sebastian held the boy tight as if never wanting to let go. He laced his fingers in front of Ciel’s chest meanwhile his own was pressed to his back. He was desperate realising how desperate he was. _I don't want you to die._ Voices fought in his head, one shouting the other down. _You're crazy. You should be happy, you are free again._ But he wasn't. So he hugged Ciel for the last time, because he knew that it would be the last. He put all his affection in his motionless and wordless touch. All his feelings. Gratitude. Hatred. Anger. Comtempt. Admiration. And perhaps another thing which mortals characterised with a very short and simple word with as many meaning as many starts there were on the sky. _Love,_ was it?

Two heartbeats. One fast, strong, crazy with desperation – and one lazy, weak, light as a snowflake, a feather from the wings of an angel.

’You know’ Sebastian places a gentle kiss on Ciel’s shoulders ’I will always be with you. Until the end’, he said, the sentence that has been told a thousand times but now it had a different meaning. He held the boy, bound to his promise, loyal, as he has ever been. Even if it wasn’t his obligation anymore, somehow it felt like it was. He didn’t need a mark on her right hand to keep him here, because he had gained something else, invisible, but, it seemed, somehow stronger which bound him to Ciel. Sebastian realised he wasn’t staying only for him, but for himself, too.

They lay in the snow like one, bleeding creature with two hearts.

The soul of the torn body clinges to this world so hard but it is not powerful enough to get hold of its edge, to prevent it from falling down into the abyss. It’s not fear of death what’s keeping Ciel here, though. It’s comfort.

He takes all the effort he has to move his raise to the demons’. Ice touches fire, and they melt together into one warm, chaotic mess. Beats. One-two-three, one-two-three. The rush of a neverending dance. One, two, three. The pace becomes slower every moment as if the recorder has been damaged. The strings of the violin break, but the melody still goes on, bleeding, in the desperate cacophony of meaningless affection.

  
One, two... The candles of the dim hall are suddenly blown away by a gust of wind. The curtains shudder by its touch. Smoke in the air. One... last...

  
And then nothing's left but darkness and silence.


End file.
